St. Louis: World Champion D Gokesh will have his task cut out against the strongest ever field in the $412000 Clutch Chess Champions showdown that gets underway here.

Almost rushing to another continent from Europe after leading his team Super Chess to a fantastic win in the European Club Cup, Gukesh will face the top three ranked players in the world over 18 games to be played under rapid chess format at the newly designed facility here at the St. Louis Chess Club.

World number one since 2011, Magnus Carlsen’s break ends after becoming a proud father recently and the world number one will yet again start as the favourite ahead of the American duo of Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana.

The second addition of the Clutch Chess within a fortnight will have the winner taking the lion’s share of the prize fund becoming richer by $120000.

The second prize is $90000 while the third and fourth are $70000 and $60000 respectively. There is also an additional $72000 at stake for every victory scored in each round. In case of draws, the prize money will be added to the overall winner’s kitty.

A brainchild of Grandmaster Maurice Ashley, the clutch chess will see increased stakes on each day. Any victory scored on day one will be worth one point while on day two it will be two points and on the final day there will be three points for every win registered. Likewise, the prize pool reserved for games will also increase on each day.

It may be recalled that the first edition played earlier this month was a Chess960 clash between two legends who renewed their rivalry after 30 years. Yet again, Garry Kasparov had proved stronger than Anand winning the match by two games to spare.

Gukesh scored three victories in last one week beside two draws in his five games at the European individual. The most cherished was against compatriot Erigaisi Arjun who missed out on opportunities to force a draw.

Caruana has been quite busy also as he just finished his fourth successive and fifth over US Championship title while Nakamura is trying to meet the FIDE deadline to complete number of rated games to qualify for the next Candidates tournament.

Carlsen has not played much recently but history has shown that when it comes to faster versions in the game, there is none equal to his accomplishments.

There will be six matches on each day and totally 36 points in all are up for grabs.

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